Information & Ethics committee  I think that the act should include explicit measures to protect the identity of an applicant. Further, there should be explicit sanctions, as is the case for people who obstruct access to information or who try to hide it.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Kenney, in my remarks I made reference to a statement that you made in the House in 2004. It concerned the existence of a central communications group revealed by someone by the name of Jonathan Murphy. You may recall this. The purpose of this group, as Mr. Murphy alleged in an article published in The Globe and Mail , was to discuss access to information requests and do whatever they could to delay and thwart them.

Information & Ethics committee  Apprised of the identity of the requester.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't recall making any objection to the content, but the identity.

Information & Ethics committee  How can a question be a matter of national security? The answer--

Information & Ethics committee  Of course, I talked about a committee which, based on the testimony of a person who was a member of the Liberal Party at the time, existed in 2002. The point of the committee was to slow down access to information and it held meetings where information requests made by reporters were discussed.

Information & Ethics committee  We believe that it is routine.

Information & Ethics committee  My answer was made earlier when I said that if you identify media requests and put them in a sidecar, and you know that there are only five people who could have made a media request—that there are only five people who routinely make requests to that department on it—and there's one journalist who's been writing about it, you're going to guess rightly who that journalist is.

Information & Ethics committee  The Canadian Newspaper Association supported the amendments proposed by the former information Commissioner, Mr. Reid, as well as the suggestions made by justice John Gomery. He also supported Mr. Reid's recommendations. Further, at the time we supported the program put forward by Mr.

Information & Ethics committee  At that time we did not study that matter. In my view, we can draw an analogy between the study being carried out by this committee and the broken window of an apartment. The window is broken because an intruder entered the apartment. Rather than focussing on the broken window, we would rather look at the intruder and the fact that a robbery actually took place.

Information & Ethics committee  This has been the subject of increasing concern to information commissioners, and it's been expressed in their annual reports, going back to Commissioner Grace, in fact--

Information & Ethics committee  --who, I think, was the second commissioner. The matter of delays is widely known in the journalistic community, the delays of journalistic requests to the extent that many journalists have been discouraged from using this tool because of the expectation that the information would no longer be of use or benefit.

Information & Ethics committee  That is correct.

Information & Ethics committee  Which of your statements are you referring to?

Information & Ethics committee  I would say we have no problem with the government developing, in parallel--as I believe it is supposed to function--a communications strategy to explain why a decision was taken when the background to that decision is going to be released in public, as long as it does not interfere with the process and as long as statutory response times are complied with, and--as Mr.